The 2012 edition of Comic-Con International gets off to a monstrously fun start

... where the big news coming out of the 2012 edition of Comic-Con International is how excited this year's attendees seem to be about family-friendly frights.I mean, you should have seen all of the people who were clamoring for tickets to Disney's "Art of Frankenweenie" exhibition ...

Photo by Jim Hill

... so that they could then see some of the puppets ...

Photo by Noe Valladolid

... and sets ...

Photo by Noe Valladolid

... which were used on the production of this new stop-motion Walt Disney Studios release. And given the way people were snapping pictures of all the Sparky maquettes which were on display ...

Photo by Jim Hill

... not to mention cooing over all of the "Frankenweenie" plushes & collectibles which will soon be hitting store shelves ...

Photo by Noe Valladolid

... it's looking more & more like The Walt Disney Company may have a horror-themed hit on its hands when this Tim Burton film finally opens in theaters on October 5th.

Mind you, "Frankenweenie" wasn't the only horror-themed family film to get a big response from Comic-Con attendees yesterday. Judging by all the people who lined up to get their "Hotel Transylvania" poster signed by that film's director, Genndy Tartakovsky ...

... it's clear that there's also a lot of interest in this new Sony Picture Animation release. Which actually rolls into theaters just ahead on Disney's "Frankenweenie" on September 28th.

Photo by Noe Valladolid

It'll be interesting to see if this trend holds later today and hundreds of animation fans cram into Hall H to catch Focus Features' "ParaNorman: Behind the Scenes" presentation.

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This hour-long presentation -- which gets underway at 10:45 a.m. -- will feature appearances by this Laika film's production team as well as members of this movie's vocal cast. It's also expected that some never-before-seen footage from this stop-motion comedy thriller (which opens in theaters on August 17th, a full six weeks ahead of Disney's "Frankenweenie" and Sony Pictures Animation's "Hotel Transylvania") will be screened as part of this panel.

And speaking of expectations: Which of these horror-themed animated features do you think -- once all of the ticket sales are tallied -- will wind up coming out on top?